That is what happened on Tuesday when Peter Navarro attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci on USA Today, writing that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have interacted with.”
That’s Peter Navarro with a Ph.D. in economics who is President Donald Trump’s top business adviser. Navarro’s skeptical views on free trade are widely rejected by most economists. And without any medical experience, he criticizes Dr. Fauci for his advice on the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Fauci has served six American presidents as their leading infectious disease expert.
Navarro says Fauci fought the decision to cut travel from China earlier this year, and in Navarro’s USA Today article, he provided a link that allegedly reinforced that claim. But the link provided in his USA Today op-ed actually shows that, while Fauci had warned at first not to restrict travel from China, in late January Fauci was one of the key public health officials who advocated for a president. skeptical Trump to do exactly that, which Trump later implemented.
Navarro correctly points out that Fauci initially told the American public that the risk of the virus was “low.” At the time, Fauci made that statement in mid-February which seemed like a reasonable point since there were only 15 cases in the United States. According to John Hopkins University, there are about 3.5 million cases in the US today, and Fauci, who has been largely blocked by the White House from not appearing on television in recent months, has warned. Elsewhere there could be as many as 100,000 new cases per day in the United States.
This has not made Fauci the flavor of the month at the White House, which follows President Trump’s example of mistakenly claiming that everything is fine on the Covid-19 front.
In his opinion piece, Navarro accuses Fauci of “flip-flop in the use of masks”, but in fact when Fauci warned the general public not to wear masks, this was early in the pandemic and in the context of ensuring that the masks: then, in short supply, he turned to front-line health workers instead of being treasured by ordinary Americans.
Navarro’s USA Today op-ed linked to a story that made just this point, undermining Navarro’s argument that Fauci was flipping over masks rather than simply providing his best public health advice, which has evolved as the situation has evolved.
Navarro also says Fauci was wrong about the efficacy of Trump’s “game-changing” drug, hydroxychloroquine, to combat Covid-19, citing that “a recent study at a Detroit hospital showed a 50% reduction in the rate mortality when the drug is used in early treatment. ”
But there are a whole host of studies that conflict with the Detroit study. They include a study of more than 1,400 patients with Covid-19 in New York, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May, which found that hydroxychloroquine did not provide benefits to patients with coronavirus and actually significantly increased their risk of arrest. cardiac.
A separate New England Journal of Medicine study found that hydroxychloroquine did not help or harm 1,376 patients who were admitted to a New York City hospital between March 7 and April 8.
USA Today even added a note to Navarro’s opinion piece, noting the inconvenient fact that “the Food and Drug Administration has revoked its approval to treat COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine.”
Navarro also criticized Fauci for saying “a declining mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening.”
Of course, the increased infection rates we’ve seen this month in 40 of the 50 states will surely increase the death rate, as there is usually a delay of many weeks between a first infection and those who eventually die of the disease, y Today’s drop in death rate is a reflection of home stay measures and, perhaps, better informed health care than in recent months, not that the coronavirus has suddenly decided to take a vacation from home. summer.
In a note published after the appearance of Navarro’s piece, USA Today editorial page editor Bill Sternberg acknowledged problems with it: “Several of Navarro’s criticisms of Fauci – about travel restrictions to China, coronavirus risk and falling death rates – were misleading or lack of context. As such, Navarro’s opinion piece did not meet USA TODAY’s fact-checking standards. “
The attacks on Fauci by Navarro are symptomatic of a deep problem in the Trump administration that begins with Trump himself, which is prioritizing illusions over science. And instead of providing any element of national leadership to fight the coronavirus, the Trump White House is employing the book’s oldest political trick of shooting the messenger who brings unwanted news, in this case a 79-year-old doctor who 67 According to the New York Times / Siena College poll last month,% of public confidence provides them with accurate information about the virus rather than just 26% for Trump.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday that Navarro’s opinion piece was “an independent action that was a violation of well-established protocol that was not supported openly or covertly.”
Yes, that fully explains why the White House over the weekend provided journalists with a background briefing that made almost the same points Navarro made in his opinion piece on Fauci’s alleged mistakes. This White House seems to believe that Americans have the historical memory of mosquitoes.
Speaking to The Atlantic magazine in an interview published on Wednesday, Fauci said of the efforts of the Trump White House to discredit him, “I cannot understand in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that … I think they are happening now. I realized that this was not prudent, because it only reflects negatively on them. ” Fauci added: “I cannot explain to Peter Navarro. He is alone in a world.”
Indeed.
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